1. The Comitia may elect officers to act on its behalf to administer the Societas, its website and the fora of the Societas. The individual titles of the officers and their individual duties shall be established by the Comitia.

2. No less than three and no more than seven officers may hold office at any one time.

The duties of this board of officers were defined as follows :

3. The officers are to collectively manage and maintain the fora and the website for the Societas. They may appoint assistants as needed. They may remove, rearrange, or edit any material on the website, with the one exception that may not edit an essay submitted as a contribution by a sodalis without the author’s permission.

4. Officers are to maintain decorum in the fora of the Societas, and thus may suspend, disbar or expel any and all subscribers to the fora, subject to each sodalis' right to provocatio.

5. The officers oversee elections held in the Comitia. They may appoint any assistants needed to conduct such elections.

6. The officers are to maintain a list of all current sodales of the Societas, and conduct a biennial census, registering sodales who wish to renew their membership. The officers may set any procedures needed to conduct the census. They may appoint any assistants to perform the census. The officers are charged with maintaining the privacy of the sodales of the Societas and the security of any information about its sodales, collectively or individually, collected by the officers for the internal use of the Societas.

7. The officers are authorized to establish administrative procedures to be used in the Societas and its Comitia, propose policies for the Societas, manage relations with persons and entities outside the Societas, and grant honorary titles to any sodalis and/or awards of recognition to its members or others. At the initiative of any sodalis, such decisions of the officers may be subject to approval or rejection by a vote of the Comitia

I suggest we now discuss how many officers we will need and what functions and titles we will grant them.

I would like to propose the following :

*1 officer responsible for the forum and the website (points 3 and 4 above). De facto what our aediles have been doing. I suggest that this officer must appoint two assistants, especially as moderators for the forum (having only one person in control of everything vital to our organisation seems rather against the democratic spirit of our new regulae, and it would put SVR in serious trouble if that one individual, for whatever reason, disappeared).

*1 officer responsible for overseeing the 'political' aspect of SVR in general (points 5 and 7 above) : organising elections, presiding debates, overseeing that everything is running smoothly and raising issues in the Comitia when trouble occurs. De facto what our consules have been doing, or what I have been doing as praetor since we no longer have any consules in function.

*1 officer responsible for everything mentioned under point 6. De facto what our censores have been doing.

I suggest that we start with these three officers only, and that those can appoint assistants as a need for them arises. As for names, I would suggest 'curator situs et fori' (1), 'curator rei publicae' (2) and 'curator sodalium (3).

I concur with your suggestions, Attice, with proposal for a slight change and my own suggestions for how to get this done.

The slight change is in the titles of the three officers that you propose. In the interest of keeping some "colour" in our organization, I propose that we retain the titles of Aedil, Consul, and Censor for the three offices. As a practical matter, it will be easier to refer to the officers by these traditional names than calling them "curator" and then having to specify which curator is meant.

My suggestion for how to get the officers installed is to simply call for volunteers to fill each office. If only one sodalis nominates himself for an office, he or she gets it. If there are more nominees, we will vote using the poll system that was used to approve the new Regulae. Since we lack active censores and an up to date list of sodales, this may be the most practical approach. What do you all think?

Simple and open. What you suggest, Tergeste, on how to hold elections for now can serve well.

As the Regulae are written, all officers are to be collectively responsible for all the duties of officers. They can, among themselves, distribute the duties of their offices. They are all to bear the same title, assisting one another and filling in for one another as circumstances require. As for the number of officers, as the Regulae were written, if we have more than three volunteer, all of them, up to seven, could be elected. Even if only three were to volunteer, they still need to receive the approval of the Comitia. You more or less have to hold a referendum in the Comitia on each candidate so that the sodales have an opportunity to reject a candidate.

The idea of having a collective leadership was to avoid problems caused when one officer might be away for a period and his or her duties therefore neglected. A collective leadership does not place so much burden on any one individual, or pose that problems might occur when any one individual would be away. What we have been experiencing is that some of our officers are away at different times of the year, leaving vacancies for periods of time. A collective leadership allows that all duties may be covered throughout the terms of office, and also allows for work loads to be shifted as may be required from time to time. The proposal made by Atticus thus undercuts the very concept of having a collective leadership. All curatores (or rectores if the Comitia prefers) are responsible for all the duties laid out in the Regulae in order to ensure that everything that needs to be done will continue to run smoothly no matter who may be on vacations, studying for exams, or are called away for any reason.

You make a good point, Piscine. Let's just elect the officers as "curatores" and once elected they can decide among which particular role each will fulfill.

I personally would allow them to adopt titles such as "consul", "censor", etc. based on those roles, with the understanding that they retain the titles at the pleasure of the consensus of their fellow officers (and the Comitia of course) and on the condition that they are actually doing the work that the title requires.

I believe I understand clare Horatius' position; certainly, if we had a Supreme Court and I were a Justice, I would see something like this as a 'pure' interpretation of the new Regula and the offices defined therein.

However, very little in human affairs remains 'pure'. Some people prefer the political side of these things, some like the administrative bits, some will gravitate towards the technical end. I believe it is only fair to the candidates standing for office to make clear which of these shall be their chief portion. Spending most of one's time on one of these aspects should not keep an officer from pinch-hitting in another field when needed; but I think we are going to end up with distinct job descriptions, and the titles to go with, if only to identify a given incumbent's strong suit.

I guess that I'd like to volunteer. I've served as praetor and rogator under the previous regulae, and I enjoyed contributing. I have no technical skills (e.g. I cannot fix a web page), but I'm interested in the political evolution of SVR and in making the new regulae work.

My academic training is in economics and business management. If we ever follow up on some of the ideas raised in the Concilium about marketing SVR and/or raising money, I could head that up.

...I believe there is room for my services on the Board and the Web site.

I am no Webmaster, and my own Page is primitive to the point of quaintness. I have no idea how to program Javascript, Flash objects and the like. But I do notice things. I could be useful in preparing and uploading content to the site, such as new Comitia actions, lists of officers, members' contributions, and so on. I can check new Boardmembers' credentials and remove bogus subscriptions, trolls and spammers. On the site itself, I am well aware of the usability issues often encountered by the visually- or manually-handicapped--such as myself. I have experience owning and moderating mailing-Lists. In short, I'm willing to do some heavy housekeeping, but would need an actual Webmaster to work with and to do the coding.

I've been hassling the Aediles for years about getting things done. Maybe the best way is to help them do it. They're good guys and could use some help.

Sure, I am willing to serve on the board, but I too have no technical skills, and like Marius and Tergestus I also am an American. We need some others to do some of the work and to better represent SVR's diversity.

Mi Horati, maybe tech skills are not what is needed this year. The site has been built and enhanced; most members seem pretty happy with the look of it, though I myself find it a little complicated.

But that's all cosmetic. The content of the site has needed serious attention for quite some time. This year's Webmaster will need to get through a backlog of edicts and contributions, post updates to the member roster, write a little SVR history, perhaps reassign existing content to reflect our current collegia structure, and of course format and post any new contributions that come in.

Formatting text for the Web is pretty much like formatting a Board post. It involves inserting HTML tags into a plain-text document where needed (for bolds, italics, links, images, paragraph breaks and such). It's tedious, time-consuming, potentially boring, and when you're done nobody notices. But it can be done by almost anyone who has Notepad on their PC and has taken the few hours to learn what the tags are and how to use them. And it is the thing that is most needed on the SVR site for this year and the near future.

People will notice when things are gotten up-to-date and kept that way. That is the greatest service that I or anyone can offer the Societas Via Romana in the coming year.

Sure, I am willing to serve on the board, but I too have no technical skills, and like Marius and Tergestus I also am an American. We need some others to do some of the work and to better represent SVR's diversity.

I agree. Although I am willing to serve on the board as well, I would prefer seeing an enthousiast 'homo novus' (m/f) for our third officer, instead of 'old' (ahem, 22) consulares such as myself again

Being still praetor, and - as such - supervising the transition to our new administration, I propose we allow for candidates until the end of this week, and hold elections between the 9th and the 15th january.

Quintus Pomponius Atticus wrote: Although I am willing to serve on the board as well, I would prefer seeing an enthousiast 'homo novus' (m/f) for our third officer, instead of 'old' (ahem, 22) consulares such as myself again

Being still praetor, and - as such - supervising the transition to our new administration, I propose we allow for candidates until the end of this week, and hold elections between the 9th and the 15th january.

Primus Aurelius Tergestus had asked me via PM if I'd like to volunteer. I had refrained because I said I don't have any specific computer skills,

Aldus Marius wrote:Formatting text for the Web is pretty much like formatting a Board post. It involves inserting HTML tags into a plain-text document where needed (for bolds, italics, links, images, paragraph breaks and such). It's tedious, time-consuming, potentially boring, and when you're done nobody notices. But it can be done by almost anyone who has Notepad on their PC and has taken the few hours to learn what the tags are and how to use them. And it is the thing that is most needed on the SVR site for this year and the near future.

I don't even now how to do the above. Writing a post is easier, I don't need to know the commands, I just mark the works and then press buttions like "quote" etc. But if you have a post where only simple computer skills are required I would do that, just to fill the quota of a Non-American and Newbie.

So far, except for Tergestus, we've all been talking about the Webmaster function. But there are other things that need to be done, completely separate from running the Board and the Web site. Tergestus is actually standing for what used to be the Consulship, managing the political and administrative affairs of the Societas.

The third spot is for someone to handle the memberships--admitting new members, approving Roman names, pinging those we haven't heard from in a while, conducting the census, keeping the rolls up-to-date. Basically, this person would function as our Censores did. This is much more an administrative and PR job than a technical one. And no one has volunteered yet.

Is anyone out there better with people than Marius? (You all are, trust me!!! <g>) Anyone got attention to detail and a flair for database work? Anyone feel for the poor newbies? --Except for the 'people' part, I'd have stood for this one myself!

Aldus Marius wrote:The third spot is for someone to handle the memberships--admitting new members, approving Roman names, pinging those we haven't heard from in a while, conducting the census, keeping the rolls up-to-date. Basically, this person would function as our Censores did. This is much more an administrative and PR job than a technical one. And no one has volunteered yet.

Should this spot be filled by only one person? If this doesn't require any special technical skill I would do it in form of contacting persons from whom we haven't heard for a while, but wouldn't like to decide solely on questions such as admitting new members and approving Roman names.